


I'm broken but that's okay. I'll get better

by CheetahLeopard2



Series: Gifts and also what I'm doing instead of working on my others [6]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aromantic, Aromantic Shinji Watari, Asexual Character, Asexual Shinji Watari, Depression, Gen, I projected a fuckton in the begining, I wanted to make Shinji's life better, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, M/M, Not explicit but I warn anyways, Schizophrenia, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Shock tharepy, Soo I did this, TRIGGER WARNINGS SERIOUSLY READ THE TAGS, That's all the non-con is, he deserves more love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8636653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheetahLeopard2/pseuds/CheetahLeopard2
Summary: Shinji can’t remember feeling anything. He was always confused when people said that they’re ‘happy’, ‘scared’, or ‘sad’. He thought it was a game.You have to play along, or you’ll be taken away. His voice said. He didn’t think that? But he did.Where?Nowhere good. They’ll take you where the crazies go.Are the crazies bad?The crazies are the best people you will ever meet, but there are people who want to make them sane, and no methods are good. *flashes of metal tables with straps on them, screaming filling his ears, air tainted with the smell of blood, shocks jolting through as bolts of heat forcing his body to contort, acidic drinks being forced down his throat flash through Shinji’s head, and he decides that he doesn’t want that*Shinji played along. He learned to read the atmosphere of a situation rather than the words. So that he knew how to smile, how to laugh, how to cry. PLEASE READ THE TAGS FOR TRIGGER WARNINGS





	

**Author's Note:**

> So yes I projected a LOOTTTT 
> 
> I LOVE SHINJI OKAY HE NEEDS MORE LOVE
> 
> Also I think Tooru has canon depression. It would make sense so...

Shinji can’t remember feeling anything. He was always confused when people said that they’re ‘happy’, ‘scared’, or ‘sad’. He thought it was a game.

 _You have to play along, or you’ll be taken away._ His voice said. He didn’t think that? But he did.

_Where?_

_Nowhere good. They’ll take you where the crazies go._

_Are the crazies bad?_

_The crazies are the best people you will ever meet, but there are people who want to make them sane, and no methods are good. *flashes of metal tables with straps on them, screaming filling his ears, air tainted with the smell of blood, shocks jolting through as bolts of heat forcing his body to contort, acidic drinks being forced down his throat flash through Shinji’s head, and he decides that he doesn’t want that*_

Shinji played along. He learned to read the atmosphere of a situation rather than the words. So that he knew how to smile, how to laugh, how to cry.

  


Smiling, that was a hard one. Raise the corners of your mouth, and lift your upper lip, he learnt.

“It’s not a real smile unless your teeth are showing!” His mom scolded when they took a family photo. Shinji was almost amused, none of his smiles are real. Everything he does feel. It’s melancholy. That’s how most of his childhood was. Melancholy.

  


Laughing. It hurt him, to force the air past his throat into the air. He watched his father, playing with his younger sister. His dad had deep, throaty chuckles. His sister had higher squeals of delight. Shinji, he had a deeper voice than his sister but can’t pull of chuckles, and giggling doesn’t work well. Shinji got into the habit of covering his mouth and forcing air out in an irregular pattern. It works well enough.

 

Crying. That one came easiest. Sometimes Shinji would feel himself brim with water, and he held it until he found a reason to let it drop. The voice in his head, it still sounded like his voice, it helped. It pushed something to fake to the forefront of his mind before he notices the reason for it. It shows him answers sometimes, things he should not know. _Premonition_ his voice whispers, so he knows what it is.

 

Shinji did not learn to read, he always knew. He would steal the book on his parents bedside table and listen as the voice gave him alternatives to the words. He would plaster on his fake smile when his parents handed him picture books, silently spelling in his head. He would read the add on the billboard outside, peak at the newspaper before asking his parents to play. He knew, but did not question his knowledge.

 

Late at night the voice would whisper to him tales of how the world was, how family is important, how heirlooms are valuable, how magic is stored up in an object unmoved, how the stars project light to other worlds and the sun is only a star. It usually ended with a sad, wistful laugh and a _but that’s just me. I’m traditional, I guess. My view doesn’t matter, you probably won’t learn this._

Shinji began collecting words, a repertoire of large words that seem small to him. A dry wit that the voice seemed to encourage, something that if he whispered under his breath the kids next to him would snicker so he laughed too.

“Your child has a broad vocabulary, and could go far,” the teacher in his primary school, age 6, told his mom. He knows that if he weren’t so _polite, formal, curt,_ these words would be said _begrudgingly, with trepidation, with a bitter tint._ He is bored in his classes, only listens to hear his teachers soothing voice, finishes his work quickly and without _embellishment, flare._

 

And so life goes on, he moves up with his class. He learns adults don’t take children seriously. _They don’t give kids enough credit,_ he notes.

His voice hums in agreement.

And then he sees kids fighting over who gets a ball today, and he realizes that the kids around him see day-to-day, not the future, and he thinks he understands, because adults seem to be fixated on the future.

 

As he gets older, he gets more friends. They aren’t really friends to him, not with the voice whispering in his head not to get to close, not to get attached. He resolves not to get close enough to learn the kids favorite color, not to remember it. He finds that a corner of the field in school grounds is a quiet place, where he can let the shouts of playing children get distant. If he lays back he can watch the sky, and if he closes his eyes long enough while doing that when he opens them everything will be tinged blue.

 

The kids around him find him nice, funny, sarcastic, charming. He just knows how to act around each of them without hurting anyone, years of faking has allowed him to learn. He still reads a lot. Going through multiple books in a day, having a few couple hundred page books he cycles through reading in twenty or fewer minutes before bed. The kids around him consider him a bit withdrawn, but really he can tell they are the withdrawn ones when he brings up world issues he read about or the voice told him and the kids don’t understand or pretend to know what they’re talking about.

 

In his third year of primary school, a kid transfers into his school. _From Wisconson_ the voice tells him.

 _How would you know?_ His mental infliction on tone is amusement, he and the voice are on fond terms, and have a bantering witty coexistence in his body, these were the good years.

 _He reeks of it._ The voice pauses, and Shinji stays quiet, sensing that there’s more the voice wants to say, _get close to them. They’re a good kid._

 _How?_ He asks.

_There’s this thing known as romance, the crushes everyone’s talking about._

Shinji lets it go but keeps the words in mind. A few weeks later, he realizes that he does love the transfer. Not in a romantic way, in a friendship way. But it’s enough to tell a classmate that he loves the transfer and the classmate to tell them.

In all honesty, he and the transfer are only friends but this way they have an excuse over the years. And when he goes on to junior high the friendship stays intact. He can say, “Sorry I’m dating someone!” when asked out.

As the two haven’t even held hands, never gone on a date he feels comfortable.

 

 In his fourth year of junior high his parents get a divorce. He’s not surprised, it was a long time coming. His parents fell out of love and it’s ended cleanly. There’s no big custody battle. General rules are set and he and his sister go to his dad’s on the weekends, as their father travels for work Monday through Friday.

 

The first year of junior high the transfer breaks up with Shinji by text. Shinji still doesn’t feel real sadness, and doesn’t cry. He’s anxious until his question of, ‘Can we still be friends?’ is answered with, ‘Of course.’

 

Shinji and the transfer, Kohaku, still eat lunch together, still ride to school together, but there’s no pressure from their peers to do couply things anymore. They talk about anything and everything, and there’s no shame and no judging no matter what. The same year Kohaku confesses that they are aromantic, and agenderflux. Shinji looks up aromantic, and finds it fits him as well as asexual.

 

He drifts closer to an acquaintance from elementary, and becomes QPPs with him. People come close and try to be his acquaintances, and he accepts their advances with a sad smile because he can tell they want to date him and their friendliness has an expiration. He learns what the voice, dubbed Amber, meant when they told him not to get close.

He tries to drift away from his QPP but is confronted and stops.

  


Amber and him often have random conversations, sometimes getting so weird and deep that thoughts bubble up and Shinji talks out loud to keep his head organized. He starts using his phone as a prop so that he won’t be seen as crazy. His sister hates him no matter how nice he is, and his heart stops when she starts to say that he should be sent to a mental assilem, even as his parents don’t take her seriously.

 

His second year of junior high he moves into the basement of his house, where the silence lets him fill the space with his music, his air fresheners, and it’s a home, a safe space, and he loves it.

His mom gets a job, so Shinji has free time when he gets home before she gets there, and they still are close.

  


Shinji finds that music does well to keep him from blanking out or being wary in a new place. Pain also helps, and he digs his nails into his skin a lot, sometimes instead using an empty mechanical pencil to apply pressure at his inner wrist, never enough to break skin, but enough to create an imprint.

 

Shinji knows enough about the body from Amber, where muscles are and such _so if you’re attacked you know where to punch_ Amber said, that he knows where to press to make it hurt but not kill or otherwise immobilized.

 

He hasn’t regularly showered in years and he’s not anywhere close to starting.

 

Panic attacks, which in his first year of junior high had been every two-to-three nights became every night. Sometimes he can feel them building at school and he spends all his concentration on subduing it until he’s distracted by something that makes the panic ebb away. He can’t speak while he does that, he finds. And that, too becomes part of normal life.  He comes home to his safe space to let the attack take it’s course before he goes to the main part of the house to do his homework. Amber tries to lessen them, recommending a sport and writing.

 

Writing is good, but for him it’s not enough. He joins his school’s volleyball club. He finds comfort in the repetition and thinking that goes into setting, and drowns himself in that during practices.

 

He’s sexually assaulted by one of the acquaintances who wanted more one day, and he glares, is ruthless in the cold shoulder he gives the assailant.

 

On a really bad day he sleeps past the alarm he set that would wake him a few hours before he actually needs to get up, the one he set to keep him able to go to school that he hopes he wouldn’t need. He can’t get out of bed, and after a couple of hours of his mom telling him he has to go, he fakes a break down. He confesses about the assault, that happened nearly three months before. He’s still empty, but now he’s had time to adjust. His mom contacts the school about the kid and he goes to school the rest of the day.

At lunch a dean approaches him and tells him he’s the one who took the call from his mom. The kid was given a talk, and apparently he’d been complained about before. Shinji is expected to forgive the kid and try to be his friend. He’s not sure what his mom actually told the dean, but he’s lost faith in the school system.

 

This is the year his mom wants him to start therapy, and he refuses. Ready to die rather than go, the warning Amber gave still reeling in his mind.

 

His third year the attacks ebb a bit. He finds himself missing things more often, blinking to find minutes he hasn’t experienced had passed. _You’re disassociating_ Amber sounds tired and wary, sometimes replaced. A voice starts telling him how he’s worthless and ugly and stupid. He knows that it’s not Amber, although all in his tone. This new one he doesn’t give a name, trying to ignore it. _The truth hurts_ it whispers. And that’s true, it’s not like he’s good for anything.

The emptiness he’s made of gets a bit brighter, hurting him. He wants to return to the comfort of the darkness, but the harsh light is forcing everything to the open. Pain still helps, he finds when he digs his nails into his skin. He finds the new voice telling him to do dangerous things, to stab his freshly sharpened pencil into his hand, to juggle the knifes his mom wants him to put away. Amber hardly ever talks to him anymore, to busy trying to give him okay or fine days.

 

 Shinji begins cutting. It helps, and it doesn’t seem to harm him besides a stinging in his wrist and a bit of blood loss. He contemplates buying razor blades, but ultimately settles on an exacto knife that he runs under hot water before and after every use. It cuts cleanly, and won’t go deep enough to be a danger. He does all of his cuts clean and fast.

 

Shinji looks up modern mental things, and figures he has depression. It doesn’t feel like it because he’s been like this his whole life but when he’s up late he can feel himself dropping. He finds that the things Amber warned him of are now illegal, and his mom starts looking for someone.

 

His every other day sessions become daily. He gets reckless. _Your only impulse control is the law._ Amber remarks, trying to lighten what should be terrifying but isn’t. His junior high years can be summed up as lethargy.

 

 That year Shinji goes on a trip with his mom, her boyfriend, and his two sons. He loves the boyfriend as he would an uncle or even stepfather. He loves the sons as much as his sister, but they are loud and run around and gang up on him when Shinji disagrees with something his sister says.

 

Three days before they leave Shinji meets the therapist. She’s nice and has a similar thought process to him, and he hopes she can help.

 

 Shinji almost makes it through the week. He thinks he’s only able to go that long because of tumblr and the friends he’s made on there and the writing he’s done.

 

But then he starts absentmindedly scratching his arm, just above the outer juncture of his wrist. He scratches away four layers of skin that he can count before he notices. The pain is nice, relieving. Shinji continues, scratching two more wounds before heading to the bathroom to wash them off and press a towel to them. He makes one more, the worst of them all before his mom and the boyfriend get back from the store. His mom notices.

 

The night they get home Shinji goes and takes a shower, for the first time dragging the exacto knife slowly and savoring the pain.

 

 His sessions with the therapist become regular, and he’s prescribed pills that help.

 

 Well, they lift his mood higher than it’s ever been, and when he starts to sink he’s stuck. It’s odd.

He starts high school and when he joins the team there are two other first years. One is a setter and his position is switch to libero. He isn’t bitter about it. He accepts it, being libero is fun. Fun- it’s something new. One of the many feelings he finds he likes.

Smiling comes naturally now. Laughing. He still has dark days. He can still remember the days wrong medications made things worse. He remembers being in the hospital for days on watch, Amber was right, his fellow crazy people were the nicest.

 

Amber’s back in full force now, and helps him be happy. They say now that he’s ready he should try to get close. Make friends. That the team’s a great place to start.

A first he’s skeptic, but then he becomes best friends with Shigeru, the setter. They get closer and closer, and there’s never any romantic feelings luckily. Kohaku went to a different high, but they talk on tumblr and on the phone still. Shigeru and Shinji become QPPs and it’s different than the first time. They spend more time together. It’s more physical comfort as well. They spend more time bonding over volleyball. Shinji finds reasons to live.

In second year Kentarou comes back. Shigeru’s fallen head over heals and Shinji teases, but does his best to set them up. It works. Shinji is ‘adopted’ along with Shigeru by Issei and Takahiro

“The meme team.”

“Living the meme _dream_.”

Shinji finds out that the captain Tooru has depression too, and they look out for each other. The team starts to feel more like family.

 

In his third year Kentarou also officially becomes Shinji’s QPP, and the first years are nice, if not as close as the old team still is.

 

The three of them go to the same college, getting an apartment together. Shinji still has drops sometimes, but everything looks up.

(I honestly almost had one of them die here but I’m not going to do that)

 Shigeru's favorite colour is the gold that Kentarou's hair turns in the sunset.

 Kentarou's favorite colour is the color of fog over dirt, the between-ness of Shigeru's hair.

Shinji remains QPPs with ‘Kyouhaba’ and the team gets together every weekend. Shinji is there when his two best friends get married. He’s there when they get a house and invite him to move in. When his younger sister gets unexpectedly pregnant in her second year of high school to a guy who broke up with her immediately, Shinji convinces her to give them the child instead of having an abortion.

 

Sure his life hadn’t started out well, now he has a family stronger than anything else. He’s no longer empty. His world is no longer filled with a probing bright light that hurts him. Now he has Amber, the team, his best friends, and his nephew. Shinji is content.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment! Love you all have a great day!
> 
> (Thank you KeyofUV for being my friend)


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